Home > Servers > Rack and Tower Servers > Intel > Guides > Design Guide—VMware vSphere and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for High-Performance Database Applications > Storage design
The XtremIO X2 storage array is designed and optimized for high-performance databases and the DBAs who manage them. Database applications can operate at peak performance on the XtremIO X2 array under heavy workloads.
Running mixed workloads (OLTP and OLAP) on a combination of physical and virtual environments enables you to consolidate all types of databases with submillisecond latencies and strong throughput.
In this Ready Stack, using the XtremIO X2 XMS WebUI, we created the following XtremIO X2 storage volumes for a clustered database implementation:
Volume provisioning in XtremIO X2 storage is simple and straightforward. You can create volumes and present them to the database servers with just a few clicks from the XtremIO X2 XMS WebUI.
In the following example, the clustered high-availability database configuration includes a production database running on two R940 servers. In this production database, each of the storage volumes is mapped to each of the R940 servers.
Figure 8. Example of clustered high-availability database configuration
Under an OLTP workload, the XtremIO X2 array provides advanced inline data reduction methods to reduce the physical data that must be stored. In this scenario, the XtremIO X2 array delivers strong IOPS performance for production workloads, and low average latency for reads and writes. In terms of transactions per minute (TPM), the two-node database can support a large OLTP workload.
Unique inline data reduction capabilities, combined with a simple scalable architecture, enable creation of production database copies at almost zero cost. These data reduction capabilities, which include thin provisioning, compression, and deduplication, are combined with the Virtual Copies that the XtremIO X2 array creates in-memory by using XVC technology without affecting production performance. The Virtual Copies share the same performance capabilities because they uses the same paths and access the same physical data.
Using this same clustered database implementation, you can use the XVC feature to create and repurpose production copies. Doing so speeds database provisioning (such as for near real-time analytics, test, or development), with complete space efficiency.
Creating database snapshots in a production environment that is running OLTP and OLAP workloads, and providing submillisecond latencies, does not take up additional physical storage space in the XtremIO X2 array.